The controversial Nunes memo is out. It claims the FBI and the Justice Department abused their surveillance authority on Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign. Democrats say the memo is misleading.
USA TODAY

JEFFERSON CITY — U.S. Rep. Billy Long stands by his call for the recent release of a classified Republican memo and supports an ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the Missouri Republican told the News-Leader on Thursday.

The memo was released last Friday with Trump's approval, and it questions how and why the FBI and the Department of Justice obtained clearance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on American Trump adviser Carter Page as part of an investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

The memo claimed that the federal FISA warrant applications did not properly disclose the influence of a dossier on Trump's ties to Russia compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research was funded at the time by the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

"You just can't do that," Long told the News-Leader on Thursday. "You can't do that to an individual. You can't go in with less than a full deck, less than showing them all your cards and showing, 'Hey, this is why we think the guy needs to be gone after.'"

"One of the big things they were hanging their hat on was this Steele dossier," Long said.

It is unclear to what degree the FBI has verified the explosive contents of the dossier, which Long, a staunch Trump supporter, characterized as "a made-up piece of fiction."

Nunes talks to reporters in the Capitol Visitor Center on March 24, 2017, where he announced that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort offered to testify before the committee. Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

Nunes speaks to the media outside the White House after meeting with President Trump on March 22, 2017. He stated that communications from members of Trump's presidential team were captured as part of "incidental" surveillance. Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency

House Intelligence ranking member Adam Schiff and Nunes talk with each other during a break in the committee's hearing on Russian meddling in the 2016 election on March 20, 2017. Drew Angerer, Getty Images

House Speaker Paul Ryan talks with Nunes and House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry on June 9, 2016, as they prepared to unveil the national security plank of the Republican agenda. J. Scott Applewhite, AP

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Following the memo's release, the Washington Post reported that the FISA court was indeed aware that research relevant to the surveillance warrant was funded by partisan sources.

The feds should have been more direct and explicitly said that Democrats were footing the bill for Steele's digging, Long said. "My opinion on that is that (federal officials) knew darn good and well that there was political bias, and they knew who had paid for it."

The memo concludes by acknowledging that prior to seeking surveillance on Page, an FBI counterintelligence investigation was triggered by information regarding another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, who has since pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Kremlin.

This undated image posted on his Linkedin profile shows George Papadopoulos posing on a street of London.(Photo: -, AFP/Getty Images)

The FBI and Democrats have criticized the memo as inaccurate and misleading — including disputing how "essential" Steele's Democrat-funded dossier was to federal investigators.

"Oh, no, no, no," Long said when asked whether his views on the importance of releasing Nunes' memo had changed. "I want everybody to see what was in it and let them be their own judge."

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President Trump waves to the crowd at the Springfield-Branson Airport while accompanied by Rep. Billy Long and Sen. Roy Blunt (obscured) on Wednesday, August 30, 2017.(Photo: Andrew Jansen/News-Leader)

Long said he wasn't aware of any critique from federal authorities about Nunes' memo being inaccurate or misleading.

Some Democrats have characterized Nunes' memo as a tactic to undermine the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into whether Trump's associates colluded with Russia ahead of the 2016 election.

Long said he did not believe the FBI was trying to undermine Trump and added that he did not see a connection between Nunes' memo and the Mueller investigation.

"I think the Mueller investigation should go forward," Long said. "I think that Mueller should get all his cards on the table and come up with whatever he can come up with."

"I think it's obvious that there's some people in the FBI that expressed their dislike for Trump as a candidate, expressed their dislike for Trump as president, and I think those individuals were working against the Trump White House and the Trump campaign. But I do not believe the FBI as a whole had any ill intent," Long continued.

To rebut Nunes, Democrats have drafted their own memo, which awaits Trump's declassification decision. Long noted that while Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee voted against releasing the Republican memo, Republicans voted in favor of releasing the Democrats' memo.

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Long told the News-Leader he also has read the Democrats' memo. In his opinion, Long said, Democrats "intentionally put material in there that cannot be released to the public" so that if and when Trump releases it, the memo would be heavily redacted.

"Then they can say, 'Oh, but the president, he's not being upfront, he's not releasing our whole memo,'" Long said. "I think it's kind of a set-up."

Long spoke to the News-Leader about an hour before the House was to vote on a bill to avert a government shutdown.

"They're having a tough time garnering enough votes," Long said of the bill, which he added included billions of dollars for programs related to infrastructure, child care, higher education and opioids.

He alluded to the impact of the spending compromise on what was a rough day for the Dow Jones industrial average, which fell more than 1,000 points Thursday.

"The amount of spending in that bill may drive the stock market down further, or they may be relieved the government won't shut down, so we'll have to see what happens on that," Long said.